RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - The future economy minister tapped by Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro insisted on Tuesday that he wanted to fast-track an unpopular pension reform to help balance government finances despite mounting resistance to getting it done this year. A woman takes a t-shirt with the image of Brazil's new president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, in front of Bolsonaro's condominium at Barra da Tijuca neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 29, 2018. REUTERS/Pilar OlivaresPaulo Guedes, whom Bolsonaro selected as a “super minister” with a portfolio combining the current ministries of finance, planning and development, has urged Congress to pass an initial version of pension reform before the Jan. 1 inauguration. “Our pension funds are an airplane with five bombs on board that will explode at any moment,” Guedes said on Tuesday. “We’re already late on pension reform, so the sooner the better.” He called the reform essential to controlling surging public debt in Latin America’s largest economy and making space for public investments to jump-start a sluggish economy. Markets surged in the weeks ahead of Bolsonaro’s Sunday victory on the expectation that he could pull off the tough fiscal agenda. Brazil's benchmark Bovespa stock index .BVSP rose 3.7 percent on Tuesday, boosted by strong corporate earnings and the resolve shown by Guedes on pension reform. Yet the University of Chicago-trained economist, who is getting his first taste of public service, met with skepticism from more seasoned politicians. Rodrigo Maia, the speaker of the lower house of Congress, said on Tuesday that reform is urgent, but cautioned that the conditions to pass it were still far off. Major Olimpio, a lawmaker from Bolsonaro’s own party who helped run his campaign, agreed the political climate was not ready for reform. Even Bolsonaro’s future chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, said in a Monday radio interview that he only expects to introduce a reform plan next year. After a meeting with Lorenzoni, Guedes said the decision on timing was ultimately a political one that the chief of staff would weigh. “We can’t go from a victory at the ballot box to chaos in Congress,” Guedes told journalists. On other issues, Guedes made clear he was the final word on economic matters, laying out plans to give the central bank more institutional independence and clarifying comments made by Lorenzoni about exchange-rate policy. “You are all scared because he is a politician talking about the economy. That’s like me talking about politics. It’s not going to work,” Guedes said. While advisers work out the details of his economic program, Bolsonaro revisited some of his most contentious campaign promises on Monday night: looser gun laws, a ban on government advertising for media that “lie,” and urging a high-profile judge to join his government. In interviews with TV stations and on social media, Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old former Army captain who won 55 percent of Sunday’s vote after running on a law-and-order platform, made clear he would push through his conservative agenda. Bolsonaro said he wants Sergio Moro, the judge who has overseen the sprawling “Car Wash” corruption trials and convicted former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of graft, to serve as his justice minister. Barring that, he said he would nominate Moro to the Supreme Court. The next vacancy on the court is expected in 2020. Bolsonaro had not formally invited Moro as of Tuesday afternoon, and the judge remained noncommittal on the proposal. “In case I’m indeed offered a post, it will be subject to a balanced discussion and reflection,” Moro said in a statement. Late on Monday, Bolsonaro said in an interview with Globo TV that he would cut government advertising funds that flow to any “lying” media outlets. During his campaign, the right-winger imitated U.S. President Donald Trump’s strategy of aggressively confronting the media, taking aim at Globo TV and Brazil’s biggest newspaper, the Folha de S.Paulo. “I am totally in favor of freedom of the press,” Bolsonaro told Globo TV. “But if it’s up to me, press that shamelessly lies will not have any government support.” Bolsonaro was referring to the hundreds of millions of reais the Brazilian government spends in advertising each year in local media outlets, mainly for promotions of state-run firms. Slideshow (2 Images)The UOL news portal, owned by the Grupo Folha, which also controls the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, used Brazil’s freedom of information act as the basis for a 2015 article that showed Globo received 565 million reais in federal government spending in 2014. Folha got 14.6 million reais that year. Globo said on Tuesday that federal government advertising represented less than 4 percent of the revenue for its flagship channel, TV Globo, without providing more detailed figures. Grupo Folha did not reply to requests for comment. Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Brad Brooks; Writing by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Larry King and Leslie AdlerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Facebook announced Friday that it would begin testing Facebook News, its dedicated feed of links to verified news outlets. Even though publishers have long advocated for Facebook to pay them for their content, the announcement stirred up controversy over who made the cut for the platform’s latest journalism experiment.The list of more than 200 outlets featured in Facebook News includes big names like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, according to Bloomberg, as well as some smaller niche news sites. It also included far right news site Breitbart News—a new detail about the program that elicited outrage. Breitbart’s historical role smuggling racist rhetoric and talking points into mainstream political discourse led many to say the site didn’t belong in a group of “Trusted Partners” tasked with serving reliable information. Breitbart is also a partner with Apple’s own editorial partnership program, Apple News.“Breitbart is not a news outlet. It is a right-wing political operation that spreads lies, foments extremism and pushes white supremacy,” Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters for America, said of the decision.“Even the Senate Press Gallery denied Breitbart permanent press credentials recognizing that it did not meet the standard of a legitimate news operation.”In a statement, Facebook’s VP of Global News Campbell Brown described the thinking behind the project. “People want and benefit from personalized experiences on Facebook, but we know there is reporting that transcends individual experience. We want to support both.”Brown noted that its selection of partners must meet guidelines prohibiting misinformation, hate speech, and clickbait, standards established and evaluated by third-party fact-checkers. The feature’s test will reach roughly 200,000 users in the U.S., according to Bloomberg, and will be available in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington, D.C., Miami, Atlanta, and Boston.Facebook News, a dedicated tab in the mobile app, will feature only links from publishers, unlike the mix of personal updates, photos, and links in the News Feed tab. Users can choose which outlets and topics to follow and link their existing paid subscriptions to the feature. A team of in-house editors at Facebook will curate a list of “Today’s Stories” surfacing top news from the day. The company is paying some publishers between $1 million and $3 million to license their content in a structure not unlike cable news licensing. News outlets will also be able to run ads either on their own sites or via Facebook. The social networking company has had a rocky relationship with publishers in the past, and News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has long criticized the company for not paying news outlets for content.In a media event Friday, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson lauded Mark Zuckerberg for the move, declaring it a “digital Damascene moment.”

The Trump administration is rolling back a climate change regulation that restricted new coal plants.The change is mostly symbolic – but nevertheless sends a strong signal. Companies in the US are not building plants that burn coal because burning natural gas is cheaper and creates less pollution. Renewable power has also eaten into coal’s market share.But the Obama-era rule for new coal plants has long been a target of the industry. It would have effectively required technology to capture the carbon dioxide that traps heat on earth and causes climate change. That technology is not in use on a commercial scale. A draft replacement rule would allow new coal plants that meet certain efficiency requirements.The acting Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Andrew Wheeler, said the Obama administration was “disingenuous” when it decided coal-plant carbon capture technologies were adequately demonstrated. He said the change to require efficiency efforts instead of carbon capture will encourage “clean coal” in the US and worldwide through technology exports.“You will see a decrease in emissions worldwide because of an increase in investments in new energy technologies,” Wheeler argued.The EPA’s own economic analysis contradicts him. It concludes that the rollback will not do anything to boost coal power in the US because any new fossil fuel plants will burn natural gas, not coal.Wheeler argued affordable energy benefits low-income people most and invited the National Black Chamber of Commerce to speak as a supporter. Experts say, however, that coal plants are shutting down because they aren’t as affordable as other options.Michelle Bloodworth, CEO of the coal industry group the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, said ahead of the event that “there is no silver bullet when it comes to developing new coal units in today’s marketplace but in announcing this proposal the EPA has outlined a regulation that both follows the law and allows new more efficient coal plants to be a viable option in the future.”Nixing the rule could invigorate coal backers worldwide, sending a message to negotiators of an international climate pact in Poland that the US is trying to bolster the future of the fossil fuel. Trump, who has questioned manmade climate change, has said he will exit that pact, the Paris agreement.David Doniger, a climate director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the move “will be judged harshly by future generations”.“The science is clear: operating large fossil fuel plants without carbon capture and storage is a disaster for the climate. What we need instead is swift and decisive action to curb dangerous climate change,” Doniger said.Fifteen health and medical groups, including the American Lung Association, opposed the EPA announcement.Across the federal government, Trump agencies have sought to slash rules for fossil fuel production and use. The environmental protection agency is also rescinding an Obama rule that aimed to shift the US away from coal use and toward more natural gas and renewable power. And the agency is expected to roll back a standard requiring coal plants to limit their toxic mercury pollution. Many plants shut down in 2015, in part so that they wouldn’t have to spend money to comply with that rule.This year, coal use in the US is expected to be at its lowest point since 1979, according to the energy information administration. Coal consumption has fallen 44% since its peak in 2007, the agency said. Topics Coal Climate change US Environmental Protection Agency Trump administration Energy Fossil fuels US politics news

The name Le Pen, for decades associated with anti-immigration and often racist politics in France, is so out of fashion that one of the leading members of the country’s far-right family has abandoned it.The move has further dismayed Jean-Marie Le Pen, the nationalist patriarch who co-founded France’s National Front (FN) party in 1972 and built it up into a formidable political force.First his daughter Marine led a campaign to “detoxify” the FN after taking over as leader in 2011 – in the process disavowing Le Pen senior’s history of incendiary rhetoric. During the 2017 presidential election Marine Le Pen used only her first name on campaign material in a bid to widen her appeal, and she plans to confirm a name change for the party on 1 June as part of a rebranding exercise.Now granddaughter Marion Marechal-Le Pen, often tipped as a future leader of the far right despite stepping back from public life last year, has dropped one of the most famous – and infamous – names in French politics.“Marion perhaps thinks that it is too much of weight to carry,” Jean-Marie Le Pen said last week.On her social media accounts Marion has changed her profile names from Marion Le Pen to simply Marion Marechal and announced she intends to be known by the latter from now on.The change “was a way to demonstrate my transition to civilian life. I have never and will never feel ashamed of my name”, she told the rightwing Boulevard Voltaire website.Marechal, a 28-year-old former MP and devout Catholic, added her mother Yann Le Pen’s name to her surname in 2012 as she launched her successful bid to enter parliament, she explained. Following reported tensions with her aunt Marine, she announced last May that she would not seek to defend her seat in the FN’s southern heartland in the Vaucluse area in order to spend more time with her daughter and work in the private sector.Some observers suspect she intends to return to politics, perhaps to succeed Marine, and a widely publicised appearance at a conservative political meeting in Washington in March fed speculation about her intentions.“Just like you we want our country back,” she told her American audience.Her first act since leaving politics has been to launch a study programme in the south-eastern city of Lyon called the Institute of Social Science, Economics and Politics (Issep).The school, which will offer masters qualifications with no formal recognition, will offer highly conservative courses with an emphasis on “cultural identity”.Its directors and teaching staff are mostly drawn from far-right and hard-right political circles, with conservative views on immigration, gay rights and French culture. It will open its doors to students in September. Topics The far right Jean-Marie Le Pen France news

The Trump administration is ending an exemption from immigration detention for pregnant women, reversing an Obama-era directive.US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers will make a case by case determination under the new policy. Women in their third trimester will still be released as before, said Philip Miller, an Ice deputy executive associate director. “Just like there are men who commit heinous acts violent acts, so too have we had women in custody that commit heinous acts,” Miller told reporters on Thursday. The Republican president has vowed to crack down on illegal immigration, including policies on which deportees can remain free during pending cases. Democrats and advocacy groups have criticized the administration for separating immigrants from their children when detained. During Barack Obama’s administration, Ice in 2016 announced that pregnant women not subject to mandatory detention should be presumptively released. Miller said on Thursday the new directive was meant to align with a Trump executive order mandating tougher Ice enforcement. Thirty-five pregnant women were in Ice custody, all subject to mandatory detention, he said. Since the policy was implemented in December, Miller said, 506 pregnant women had been detained by ICE. He could not say what had happened to each of them, but noted that some had probably been deported while others might have been released in the United States. Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program with the Women’s Refugee Commission, criticized the move and said many women entering the United States were pregnant due to rape. “Detention is especially traumatic for pregnant women and even more so for victims of rape and gender-based violence,” she said in a statement. Miller said pregnant women with asylum claims determined to be based on a “credible fear” of persecution in their home country would still probably be released. The policy change was first reported by the Hill on Thursday, citing internal Ice documents. Topics US immigration Trump administration Donald Trump news

A 69-year-old man armed with a rifle threw incendiary devices at an immigration jail in Washington state early on Saturday morning, then was found dead after four police officers arrived and opened fire, authorities said.A friend of the dead man said she thought he wanted to provoke a fatal conflict, the Seattle Times reported, and described him as an anarchist and anti-fascist. The Tacoma police department said the officers responded about 4am to the privately run Tacoma Northwest Detention Centre, a Department of Homeland Security detention facility that holds migrants pending deportation proceedings.The detention centre has also held immigration-seeking parents separated from their children under Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, an effort meant to deter illegal immigration.The shooting took place about six hours after a peaceful rally in front of the detention centre, police spokesman Loretta Cool said.The Pierce county medical examiner’s office identified the man as Willem Van Spronsen of Vashon Island, the Tacoma News-Tribune and the Seattle Times reported.Police said Van Spronsen caused a vehicle to catch fire and attempted to ignite a large propane tank and set buildings alight. Police said that besides the rifle, he had a satchel and flares.Police said officers called out to Van Spronsen and shots were fired.Officers then located Van Spronsen and determined he had been shot and was dead. Authorities said investigators were processing the scene and police are continuing to investigate. No law enforcement officers were injured.A motive for Van Spronsen’s actions had not been determined, Cool said.A friend of Van Spronsen, Deb Bartley, told the Seattle Times she had been a friend for about 20 years. She described Van Spronsen as an anarchist and anti-fascist and said she believed his attack on the detention center was meant to provoke a fatal conflict. “He was ready to end it,” Bartley said. “I think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs. I know he went down there knowing he was going to die.” She said she and other friends of Van Spronsen got letters in the mail “just saying goodbye”. He also wrote what she referred to as a manifesto, which she declined to discuss in detail.Van Spronsen was accused of assaulting a police officer during a protest outside the detention centre, the News-Tribune reported. According to court documents he lunged at the officer who was trying to detain a 17-year-old protester on 26 June 2018.Van Spronsen pleaded guilty to the charge of obstructing police and was given a deferred sentence in October, the News-Tribune reported.GEO Group, which runs the 1,575-bed Northwest Detention Centre, in an email to the Associated Press said baseless accusations about how detainees were treated at its facilities “have led to misplaced aggression and a dangerous environment for our employees, whose safety is our top priority. “Violence of any kind against our employees and property will not be tolerated. We are thankful for the quick and brave action by the Tacoma police department, which prevented innocent lives from being endangered.”In 2018 a federal judge ruled that Washington state could pursue its lawsuit seeking to force GEO Group to pay minimum wage for work done by detainees at the detention centre. In November a Russian asylum-seeker who conducted a hunger strike in protest at conditions in the detention centre died by suicide, the county medical examiner’s Office ruled. Mergensana Amar, 40, was taken off life support after attempting to kill himself while in voluntary protective custody at the detention centre on 15 November, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. Topics US news US crime Refugees US immigration news

Who controls Kashmir? The region in the foothills of the Himalayas has been under dispute since India and Pakistan came into being in 1947. Both claim it in full, but each controls a section of the territory, separated by one of the world's most heavily militarised borders: the ‘line of control’ based on a ceasefire border established after a 1947-48 war. China controls another part in the east. India and Pakistan have gone to war a further two times over Kashmir, most recently in 1999. Artillery, mortar and small arms fire are still frequently exchanged. How did the dispute start? After the partition of colonial India in 1947, small, semi-autonomous ‘princely states’ across the subcontinent were being folded into India or Pakistan. The ruler of Kashmir dithered over which to join until tribal fighters entered from Pakistan intent on taking the region for Islamabad. Kashmir asked Delhi for assistance, signing a treaty of accession in exchange for the intervention of Indian troops, who fought the Pakistanis to the modern-day line of control. In 1948, the UN security council called for a referendum in Kashmir to determine which country the region would join or whether it would become an independent state. The referendum has never been held. In its 1950 constitution, India granted Kashmir a large measure of independence. But since then it has eroded some of that autonomy and repeatedly intervened to rig elections and dismiss and jail democratically elected leaders. What is Kashmir’s special status? Kashmir’s special status, given in exchange for joining the Indian union, has been in place since 14 May 1954. Under article 370, the state was given a separate constitution, a flag, and autonomy over all matters except for foreign affairs and defence. An additional provision, article 35a, prevented people from outside the state buying land in the territory. Many Kashmiris believed this was crucial to protecting the demography of the Muslim-majority state and its way of life. The ruling Bharatiya Janata party repeatedly promised to scrap such rules, a long-term demand of its Hindu nationalist support base. But analysts warned doing so would almost certainly ignite unrest. On Monday 5 August 2019, the government issued a presidential order to abolish Kashmir’s special status. The government argued that the provision was only intended to be temporary and that scrapping it would boost investment in Kashmir. Critics, however, said the move would escalate tensions with Pakistan – which quickly called India’s actions illegal – and fuel resentment in Kashmir, where there is an insurgency against Indian rule. What do the militants want? There has been an armed insurgency against Indian rule over its section of Kashmir for the past three decades. Indian soldiers and Pakistan-backed guerrillas fought a war rife with accusations of torture, forced disappearances and extra-judicial killing. Until 2004, the militancy was made up largely of Pakistani and Afghan fighters. Since then, especially after protests were quashed with extreme force in 2016, locals have made up a growing share of the anti-India fighters. For Indians, control of Kashmir – part of the country’s only Muslim-majority state – has been proof of its commitment to religious pluralism. For Pakistan, a state founded as a homeland for south Asian Muslims, it is the last occupied home of its co-religionists. Michael Safi and Rebecca Ratcliffe

However, Benedicte Soteras, Digital Luxury Group’s head of search, noted that interest in traditional mechanical watches had remained high since 2015. “It’s like the e-book and print,” she said. “You will always find audiences for both types of product.”An analyst with Counterpoint Research, a Hong Kong-based analytics company, said his review of market data indicated that luxury smartwatch sales had been declining. When TAG Heuer introduced the Connected Modular range, supported by the might of its LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton parent organization, “there seemed to be an upswell,” said Peter Richardson, a research director at Counterpoint. “They seemed to be doing reasonable volumes — over 1,000 per week. But it seems to have faded off.”Mr. Richardson said he did not have precise information about shipments of the TAG Heuer smartwatch, but he said the “indicative direction was negative from 2017,” based on research by the Swiss investment bank Vontobel (which calculated a decline of 2 percent in TAG Heuer revenues in 2018).This might explain why luxury watch brands appear to have cooled on smartwatches. For example, Gucci’s “smartband” collaboration with the recording artist and entrepreneur Will.i.am that was announced at Baselworld in 2015 has disappeared. And the only luxury smartwatch introduction at the major Swiss watch fairs this year was TAG Heuer’s Connected Modular Golf Edition, a line extension.Analysts agreed that mixing luxury and the rapid obsolescence of a smartwatch was a consumer turnoff. Mr. Richardson of Counterpoint Research compared luxury smartwatches to the smartphones made by Vertu, his former employer. “It was incongruous that you had this amazing handcrafted piece of art and engineering, but underneath was this very bog-standard smartphone,” he said of the failed phone brand. “And that’s the danger in the luxury smartwatch world.” (Louis Vuitton, TAG Heuer and Montblanc all use Google’s Wear OS, an operating system available in much cheaper watches, like Fossil’s $275 Sport smartwatch.)

Canada’s federal government has defended its decision to ask frontline employees to adopt gender-neutral language when interacting with the public, after the move was branded as ridiculous and mocked by opposition politicians.Earlier this year staff at Service Canada – the federal agency that connects Canadians to government services and benefits such as pension and employment insurance – were issued guidelines asking them to use gender-neutral or gender-inclusive language so as to avoid “portraying a perceived bias towards a particular sex or gender”.The directive, published this week by Radio Canada, offered the terms mother and father as examples of gender-specific language in contrast to the neutral term of parent. The use of honorifics such as Mr, Mrs or Ms “can be seen/perceived as gender specific by a client”, it noted, and instead encouraging employees to address people by full names or ask how they preferred to be addressed. Reaction to the news was swift. LGBTQ group Egale Canada welcomed the move, with its executive director, Helen Kennedy, noting in an interview with the CBC that the task of accessing government programs can often be uncomfortable for those who don’t fit into “neat boxes”.The federal New Democratic party also threw its support behind the idea. “If we want to create a society where we respect everyone,” leader Jagmeet Singh told reporters, “we must give more consideration to individuals who are in minority positions who have experienced a lack of respect for years.” Other opposition politicians, however, took aim. “Totally ridiculous,” said Conservative MP Larry Miller. “I have a mother and I have a father. Anybody out there, even if you were born through a surrogate you still have a mother and a father biologically … We all have a mother and a father.” Bloc Québécois MP Louis Plamondon suggested the government was headed down a slippery slope. “Should we stop talking about the ‘black market’? Should we ban that? Should we also ban the term ‘whitewashing’? This is all very philosophical, isn’t it?” Conservative leader Andrew Scheer linked the guidelines to Justin Trudeau’s use of the term peoplekind at a town hall last month. “He claimed it was a bad joke,” Scheer told the House of Commons on Wednesday. “Can the prime minister tell us why this bad joke has become a directive from his government?”The directive comes amid a wider government push towards inclusivity. Last year the Liberal government joined more than half a dozen countries around the world in allowing its citizens to identify as gender X on their passports as well as passed legislation to better protect transgender Canadians from discrimination and violence.On Wednesday Jean-Yves Duclos, Canada’s minister of families, children and social development, defended the guidelines, noting they had been drafted in response to public complaints.He stressed that Service Canada would continue to use Mr and Ms when interacting with clients. “We are only confirming how people want to be addressed as a matter of respect,” he wrote on Twitter. “We are proud that Service Canada reflects the diversity of Canada’s population and is working to adapt to the reality of 21st-century families.” Topics Canada Gender LGBT rights Americas news

On Aug. 15, India marked its 71st Independence day with the return of a priceless Buddha statue stolen from Nalanda, Bihar, almost 57 years ago to the day.The six-and-a-half inch bronze antiquity dates back to the Pala dynasty that ruled over the modern Bihar and Bengal region between the 8th and 12th centuries. It was removed from a museum along with 13 other statues, and Indian authorities’ efforts to trace this valuable hoard had floundered for decades.Then, S Vijay Kumar got involved.Using rare photos of the stolen statues and tapping an international network of fellow antiquities aficionados, Kumar, co-founder of the India Pride Project, was able to eventually track down the Buddha statue to a London-based dealer of Indian objects. It took months of wrangling and careful examination before the piece was established as the very same statue stolen from Bihar, and the process of repatriating it was put into gear.This is only the latest case of idol theft cracked with Kumar’s help.The 44-year-old works at a shipping company in Singapore, but his long-held fascination with temple art has fueled an unlikely hobby: hunting down India’s numerous stolen antiquities, including many priceless idols taken out of the temples of his home state, Tamil Nadu.In his new book, The Idol Thief (Juggernaut), Kumar describes the phenomenon in India, implicating everyone from government officials and the police to art dealers, auction houses, and even some of the world’s biggest museums.Of course, Kumar didn’t start out with the ambition to trace stolen art. Back in 2007, when he launched the blog Poetry in Stone, his primary goal was simply to educate people about the history and art inside Tamil Nadu’s temples.“There was an absolute lack of awareness about temple art, and people used to just go into temples, go into the main shrine, and just walk out. They wouldn’t even spend a minute going around and looking at all the sculptures,” Kumar told Quartz. “I decided that there was a need to sensitise the common man…there was a need for a dummy’s guide to Indian art, and instead of bringing it out as a book I thought I’d start a blog.”“There was a need for a dummy’s guide to Indian art.”With over 300 posts written in Tamil and English, Kumar eventually connected with like-minded art lovers around the world, and a community formed online to share photos and information about Tamil Nadu’s temple art. Members collected and digitised books on the topic, and organised site visits to photograph idols and icons.It was on one of these site visits that Kumar first noticed that some of the idols listed in books and other material weren’t actually to be found inside the temples. “We asked some questions, (but) the answers were not really forthcoming. They would say it’s in the museum; we’d go to the museum, they’d say it’s in the go-down, the stockyard. And then we knew that something was amiss,” he explained. “And at that point, we also realised that a lot of Indian art was coming up for sale and being acquired by museums for ridiculous prices. And they had no provenance information and nobody was taking action.”So, he began tapping his online community to try and identify Indian artifacts on display around the world that could potentially have been stolen.“Thanks to software and IT call centres, we had Indian guys almost all over the world, so we requested them to go to museums, auction houses, sales. (We said) whenever you find an Indian object, you take one (photo) with you, one without you, and send us that photo,” Kumar said.This network eventually built one of the largest photographic archives of distributed Indian art overseas. The archive, and Kumar’s penchant for matching photos, would play a significant role in the shocking downfall of an Indian-American art dealer who made millions selling stolen idols.In his book, Kumar delves into the modus operandi of Subhash Kapoor, a New York-based art dealer who hobnobbed with the rich and famous, all the while selling collectors and museums priceless pieces of Indian heritage for enormous sums.Many of these rare pieces were stolen from forgotten or unused temples in India, and transported to the US through a sophisticated network of corrupt smugglers, customs officials, and shipping companies stretching from Chennai to New York, London, Hong Kong, and Singapore.Central to the riveting story of Kapoor’s years of crime and eventual arrest by Interpol in 2011 are idols stolen from a temple in Suthamali, Tamil Nadu.In the years leading up to his arrest, both the Idol Wing in Tamil Nadu, set up in 1980 to probe antiquities theft, and suspicious US authorities were closing in. It was Kumar, though, who ended up finding definitive proof that would help put an end to Kapoor’s lucrative racket.He did so by identifying that a pair of Shiva Nataraja and Sivakami idols that Kapoor was putting on sale in New York had come from the Suthamali temple. Rare archival images sourced from the French Institute of Pondicherry, which had begun documenting temple art in 1955, showed that the idols were inside the temple as recently as 1994.Under the 1970 UNESCO convention for preventing the illicit export or transfer of cultural property, which India ratified in 1972, items taken out of the country after that date have to be forfeited and returned home with no compensation. Kumar alerted the idol wing of the match, which proved that the idols had been stolen well after 1972. Armed with this proof, and confessions from former partners, Indian authorities set in motion the process that would end with Kapoor being arrested by Interpol at the Frankfurt International Airport on Oct. 20, 2011.Kapoor was eventually extradited to India in 2012, and he remains in prison awaiting trial. But the exposure of his complex network, and his warehouses filled with $100 million worth of stolen Indian art, revealed the staggering extent of the crime, and how ill-equipped India was to handle it.A 2013 report (pdf) by the comptroller and auditor general of India (CAG) raised concerns over the trend. It revealed that ”security lapses” had led to the theft or loss of 37 art objects from site museums run by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and 131 antiquities from monuments and sites themselves over the past 50 years. Many of these antiquities had eventually emerged at sales conducted by prominent auction houses abroad.“We found that the ASI had never participated or collected information on Indian antiquities put on sale at well known international auction houses viz. Sotheby’s, Christie’s, etc. as there was no explicit provision in the AAT (Antiquities and Art Treasures) Act, 1972, for doing so. We noticed several examples of antiquities of national importance being sold and displayed abroad,” the CAG report said.This, despite the fact that the 1970 UNESCO convention set down a clear framework for source countries to get their stolen heritage back. Between 1976 and 2001, the CAG found, only 19 antiquities had been brought back to India by the ASI. And after 2001, not a single case had been cracked.After 2001, not a single case had been cracked.For Kumar, that report really put things in context. The lack of specific heritage laws and weak punishments for those convicted of stealing from religious sites meant that art crime could often go unpunished. But what was worse was how many in India were often complicit in the crime. Tamil Nadu’s idol wing itself was eventually found to have a mole that alerted the smuggler network whenever the investigation got close.“There is generally a view that this is petty theft: one or two places, some small petty robbers. But there is pretty much an organised network that’s doing it,” he said.Demand from private collectors feeds this network, but international museums are also part of the problem. At the end of the book, Kumar lists museums who did business with Kapoor and it includes the likes of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Louvre in Paris. After Kapoor’s arrest, Kumar writes, no museums came forward to return their prized purchases to India, standing by their “cosmetic” due diligence until Kumar was able to match photos to archival images to prove the objects were stolen from temples.In recent years, a number of valuable pieces have started to make their way back to India, celebrated with diplomatic photo opportunities. But Kumar maintains that with more support, India could retrieve thousands of pieces of lost heritage. The custodians tasked with protecting heritage, though, leave much to be desired, he argues.In Tamil Nadu, for instance, 1,200 idols were stolen between 1992 and 2017, according to an audit by the Hindu religious and charitable endowments (HR&CE) department that administers the state’s many temples. But despite mounting pressure from the Madras high court to address idol theft, few have been found. In fact, the state’s idol wing is engaged in a fierce battle with the HR&CE, which has taken much of the focus away from the actual process of finding and bringing back stolen art.Sharmila Ganesan, co-convener of the Tamil Nadu chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, believes there hasn’t been enough action.“Accountability has been lacking over the years,” she told Quartz, adding that unscientific restoration and preservation practices conducted by those with little expertise are also part of the problem, creating gaps that make ancient heritage sites all the more vulnerable to theft.The incentive for change has to come from the state, she said, which should also tap conservation experts and activists, like Kumar himself. But the first step is to make a record of heritage sites and their artifacts, a move that has been promised for decades to no avail.“We need enumeration and documentation to be done. There have already been some efforts but it has to be a much more concerted effort, and it has to be technology-enabled,” she argues. “Today, we have so much technology at hand, and that should be effectively utilised to ensure that we are able to store all the details of all the idols across Tamil Nadu.”And that’s an idea relevant for the rest of India, too. After all, as Kumar said, Tamil Nadu’s idol theft crisis is just the tip of the iceberg.“This isn’t a problem that plagues Tamil Nadu and other southern states alone. The loot of our gods is taking place in temples across the land, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari,” he writes in the book.

A two-decade surge in populist rhetoric that has upended the global political landscape can be revealed for the first time after the Guardian commissioned a study of speeches by almost 140 world leaders.The research, which is based on analysis of public addresses by prime ministers, presidents and chancellors in 40 countries, suggests the number of populist leaders has more than doubled since the early 2000s.It also reveals how politicians across the globe have gradually adopted more populist arguments, framing politics as a Manichean battle between the will of ordinary people and corrupt, self-serving elites.The project was overseen by Team Populism, a global network of political scientists who have pioneered the use of “textual analysis” in populism studies. Their research is compiled in the Global Populism Database, the most comprehensive and reliable tracker of populist discourse in the world. Each leader was given an average populism “score”, based on the extent to which speeches contained populist ideas. The data pinpoints populist discourse by leaders in all the largest countries in Europe and the Americas, as well as India. Researchers graded their speeches on a 0-2 scale, ranging from not populist to very populist. The average populism score, across all 40 countries, has doubled from 0.2 in the early 2000s to around 0.4 today. The number of countries with leaders classified as at least “somewhat” populist – a score of 0.5 and above – has also doubled in that period, from seven in 2004, to around 14 in recent years.The study also highlights the trajectory of individual countries, such as Venezuela, where very high levels of populist discourse persisted as Hugo Chávez – the most populist leader in the database – was succeeded by president by Nicolas Maduro.That contrasts with countries like India, the US, Mexico and Brazil, where leaders rarely used any populist rhetoric until recent elections, when the successful prime ministerial or presidential candidate transformed the terms of debate.The nature of the rise in populist rhetoric is brought into focus when the size of affected countries is considered. In the early 2000s, Venezuela, Argentina and Italy were the only countries with populations larger than 20 million with populist leaders. The populist club increased significantly between 2006 and 2009, when Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and the Czech Republic’s Mirek Topolánek came to power – and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Vladimir Putin began using populist rhetoric.The most significant expansion, however, has occurred in the last five years, when more populists came to power in central and eastern Europe, and the elections of Donald Trump, India’s Narendra Modi, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro put populists in power in some of the world’s most populous countries.Kirk Hawkins, an associate professor at Brigham Young University who led the research study, said: “There have been waves of populism throughout the past 250 years, and in countries such as the United States populism is actually fairly common in third-party movements. But much of Europe and North America are experiencing a wave that for these countries is new.” He added: “It’s extraordinary to see their levels of populism beginning to approach what we see in, say, Latin America.”Funded by theguardian.org, a US-based non-profit, Hawkins trained 46 paid researchers to identify populist discourse in speeches in 13 different languages. They analysed four speeches for each leader’s term in office, and an average was taken for an overall populism score.The results were combined with previous speech-analysis to build the Global Populism Database, which will be made public in the coming days. It will be an open resource for academics, journalists and policy-makers who wish to study populism.Three-quarters of leaders in the database, including Poland’s Donald Tusk, the UK’s David Cameron, Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Germany’s Angela Merkel, were classified as “not populist”.Others were divided into moderately or “somewhat populist” leaders like Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi; “populist” leaders like the Czech Republic’s Topolánek; and “very populist” leaders, a band dominated by Latin American leftists like Chávez, Maduro, Morales and Correa.The data also serves as an antidote to often overstated claims about a populist tsunami – putting into context the rise of leaders like Trump, Modi and Bolsonaro, all of whom were classified as only “somewhat populist”.Erdoğan was the only non-Latin American leader to warrant a “very populist” label on the basis of the speech-analysis, and the only rightwing leader to reach that level of populist discourse. In a sign of how much the Turkish leader has changed during his 16 year years at the helm of his country’s political system, Erdoğan was classified as “not populist” when he first came to power in 2003.Vladimir Putin similarly only appears to have begun giving moderately populist speeches around 2008, when he stood down as president and assumed the role of Russian prime minister. The same is true of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, was not populist during his first term, which ended in 2002, but after returning to power in 2010 he became one of Europe’s most populist prime ministers.Measured through the speeches of its leaders, Turkey has undergone the largest increase in populist rhetoric of any of the 40 countries, followed by Bolivia, Nicaragua, Mexico, Poland, El Salvador and the United States. Only two leaders – Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Bulgaria’s Boyko Borisov – have bucked the wider trend and become less populist over consecutive terms.The research finds leftwing politicians on average scored slightly higher for populism in their speeches, at 0.4, than their right-wing and centrist counterparts, 0.3. The study also confirms that Latin American varieties of populism tend to be socialist, whereas populists in Europe are more likely to be right-wing.Of the 46 leaders’ terms that were categorised as at least moderately populist, 26 were Latin American, most of which were leftwing. There were 18 European leader terms that were at least moderately populist, most of which were right wing. It is unusual to find centrist populists, however some leaders in the database, such as Italy’s current prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, defied easy categorisation on a left-right scale and were listed as “neither”.Overall, 15 countries in the database have experienced a significant overall increase in populist discourse over the two decade period, compared with just four that experienced a similar decline in populist rhetoric in that period.While several countries in the early 2000s were run by leaders that were at least moderately populist, most were smaller states like Ecuador, Latvia, Paraguay and Croatia. Today the list includes several much larger countries like Turkey, Mexico, Brazil, India, Russia and the US.As a result, the number of people living in a country in the database led by a leader that is at least somewhat populist has increased from 120 million 17 years ago to more than 2 billion today.The research also puts a spotlight on 15 countries, many in western Europe, which have never had a leader that uses populist rhetoric during the last two decades. They include Germany, Norway, Sweden, Uruguay, Chile, France, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands and Canada.That is not to say these countries have not been impacted by populist discourse. Research conducted by the Guardian and 30 leading political scientists in November revealed the share of votes going to populist political parties has more than tripled since 1998, helping rightwing populists gain ministerial posts in countries like Austria, Norway and Finland.Perhaps the most intriguing data in the speech-analysis, however, relates to the UK. A succession of prime ministers, including Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, all scored very low scores on the populism scale. However, the average populism score given to Theresa May was 0.5, nudging her into the lower end of the same band of “somewhat populist” leaders that includes Trump, Modi, Orbán, Putin and Bolsonaro.The Global Populism Database consists of research conducted by Team Populism and Central European University’s Comparative Populism project. The full methodology behind the research is available here.

It’s almost the end of the year. If you’re like almost everyone else, you’re planning to start 2019 off with a bang by bettering yourself. Perhaps your aim is to lose weight. Or maybe it’s to save money or pay off debt. Or perhaps it’s something nobler, like treating other people with more respect.Those are all fantastic goals. But let’s be honest, they’re going to take time and effort. And statistically–sorry to be a bummer–you probably won’t achieve them.The good news is that you have a device in your hand that you can use to start your new year off on a better footing. And it will only take a matter of seconds. I’m talking about your smartphone–but the curveball is I’m not going to tell you to download a fitness tracker, a financial planner, or a meditation app. No, I’m talking about taking 60 seconds to delete some apps that are causing you more harm than good.What’s that? You don’t have any apps that fit that bill? Think again, my friend, and then get the following apps off your phone before the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve.Apps that depress youResearchers have known for years now that social media is so addictive because our brain gives us a hit of dopamine whenever we get a new like, message, or friend request. But despite this supposedly feel-good quality, there is ample evidence that social media actually causes depression, especially in teens and young adults.The reason for this is because people heavily curate their lives when posting to social media. That makes us believe that our friends’ lives are much more romantic, accomplished, and just all-around better than our own. This leads to people thinking something must be wrong or lacking in their life, and that can cause depression.So get rid of all the social media apps that might make you feel good a few seconds at a time, but in the long run leave you feeling worse off. The worst offenders are Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Oh, and as an extra bonus, get rid of FaceTune. Nature did not intend for you to look like a blurry mannequin–and no, people don’t think your friends who use it look hotter than you.Apps that track youWe all have stalkers in our lives that follow us everywhere we go. They’re called apps–and they access our location data anytime they want to see where we are. If a person was doing this, we would call them creepy (and probably call the cops). So why should we let an app do it?The worst offenders are apps like Foursquare and Google Maps. Yes, they need to check your location for their core functionality–but they don’t need continuous access to it. And while you can disable constant location tracking in Google Maps, for example, Google has tons of ways it induces you into turning it back on. Another widely used app that tracks your location everywhere you go is GasBuddy–and now it, rather alarmingly, tracks more than just your location.Apps that pretend to protect your privacy but don’tIt’s almost 2019, and everyone should be using a VPN to protect their privacy online. However, you get what you pay for, and if an app says it offers a “free” VPN it’s probably a good idea to steer clear of it. Why? Because many free VPN apps have been found to route browsing history and data to anonymous companies in China. And most other free VPNs will sell your data to advertisers and data-mining companies to make a buck.An uber-popular free VPN app is Onavo Protect, which is owned by Facebook. While the app does let you keep your browsing history private from your ISP, it routes all your online activity through Facebook’s servers, which the company can then access. Apple got so angry about Facebook’s Onavo Protect tactics, it forced the company to pull the app from the App Store earlier this year (it’s still available for Android).Bottom line: Definitely use a VPN app, but not a free one. It’s worth it to pay a few dollars a month for true privacy.Apps that turn you into the productRemember, if you aren’t paying for an app or online service, you most likely are not the customer. Instead, you’re the product. Companies make you into the product by gathering as much data about you as possible, and packaging it up to sell you to advertisers or other people who want to know all about you.After all the data scandals we’ve seen in 2018, why are we still letting these companies collect unfettered data about us? The worst offenders when it comes to this are companies like Facebook and Google. That starts with their namesake Facebook and Google apps. But their other offerings are also offenders. For instance, Faceboook’s Messenger is one of the few messaging apps that doesn’t encrypt your messages by default, allowing the company to read them freely and target ads at you based on the conversations you have. And when you log into Google Chrome, it helps Google keep tabs on your online activity.Apps that waste your timeFinally, 2018 was the year the masses started realizing just how much time they spent on their smartphones. This year also saw Google and Apple add time-time-management reports and features to Android and iOS that show just how much time you waste in any given app.While all of us have our own unique set of apps that we waste too much time on, there are some common offenders. Games such as Fortnite, Candy Crush, and Pokémon Go are highly addictive, as are other apps on this list, including Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. And let’s not forget Tinder, the dating app that turns everyone into a disposable commodity. Do you really need to spend an hour every day swiping on strangers, or would your new year get off to a better start if that time was better spent nurturing your existing relationships and connections?

MADRID (Reuters) - Gibraltar’s chief minister Fabian Picardo said on Thursday that the peninsula was ready for any potential outcome regarding talks on Britain’s exit from the European Union. The main question mark ahead of a Sunday EU summit is over Spain’s demand to get assurances on the disputed territory of Gibraltar. Reporting by Sam Edwards; writing by Jesús Aguado; editing by Ingrid MelanderOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The US says it will join Australia in developing a naval base in Papua New Guinea (PNG), in an apparent move to curb China's growing influence.Vice-President Mike Pence said the three countries would work together on the facility on Manus Island.Australia announced last month that it would work with PNG to develop the island's Lombrum Naval Base.Mr Pence made the announcement on the sidelines of the Apec summit in the PNG capital, Port Moresby."The United States will partner with Papua New Guinea and Australia on their joint initiative at Lombrum Naval Base," he said."We will work with these two nations to protect sovereignty and maritime rights in the Pacific islands." China 'training for strikes' on US targets Why is the South China Sea contentious? Australia ramps up Pacific spending Lombrum, which was a major US naval base during World War Two, holds a strategic position overlooking busy trade routes.The US and Australia have a shared concern over China's increasing influence in the region. Reports earlier this year that Beijing was looking to build a permanent military base in the South Pacific alarmed both countries.Mr Pence did not elaborate on US plans for the Manus Island base or whether US ships would be permanently stationed there.He said the facility would show US commitment to an "open and free Indo-Pacific". "Our commitment is to stand with countries across this region who are anxious to partner with us for security," he added.Australian defence minister Christopher Pyne has said some Australian ships would probably be based permanently at Lombrum, broadcaster ABC reported.Australia and the US are part of the "Five Eyes" Western intelligence alliance along with Canada, New Zealand and the UK.Earlier this month Australian PM Scott Morrison announced a multi-billion dollar fund for Pacific island nations to build infrastructure - another apparent attempt to counter Beijing.He said the project aimed to restore the Pacific to the "front and centre" of Australia's foreign outlook.China has been providing millions of dollars in loans for infrastructure projects in the region and has become the second-largest donor of foreign aid there behind Australia.

“I mean just what is his problem? He comes out with disgraceful stuff like this all the time. It’s not funny, it’s dangerous. He is peddling this rightwing rhetoric and shrouding it in humour.” Waqas Siddiqui is exasperated and fears yet another rise in hate crime in his home town of Blackburn after Boris Johnson’s controversial remarks about the burqa. But another thing that Siddiqui predicts is the rise in sales of the full veil over the next few weeks. The Siddiqui family own the Hijab Centre in Whalley Range – an area with a large Muslim population. For 17 years, they have sold every kind of Muslim headscarf conceivable. Rows of mannequin heads line shelves. They are adorned in intricately embroidered scarves of fuchsia and turquoise. Nadeem Siddiqui and his wife, Amna, make regular trips to Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to bring back luxurious cloths and silks.To the front of the brightly lit store in a corner, there is a much smaller section. A few pieces of thin black cloth with a slit in the upper section hang from a hook. These are niqabs. They cover everything on a face apart from the eyes. The store now sells roughly one a day, having seen a steady growth in recent years.Mariam, one of the shop assistants, demonstrates. She places the niqab on her face and there is a bit of giggling – she doesn’t normally wear one, but says she sells many and appreciates why women want to wear them. In a mix of Gujarati and English she explains that women feel protected by the covering – “they don’t want men looking at them”.Siddiqui, 27, says Blackburn has experienced a rise in women wearing the niqab. He believes it is a reaction to the criticism of his faith. His wife chooses to wear a full-face veil but his mother and sister don’t.“There has been an increase – it is mostly the younger girls who are buying them rather than the elderly. I think we see more girls wearing them now in places like Blackburn because when people criticise your religion, you hold on to it a bit more. You retreat back into what you’re comfortable with,” he says.The last time there was an increase in sales of the niqab at the shop was in 2006. The area’s local MP, Jack Straw, wrote a controversial column in a local newspaper requesting that Muslim women lift their veil at his surgeries in his constituency. Straw sparked a national debate, saying he was worried about the “implications of separateness” and the development of “parallel communities”.“We saw a rise in sales during that time,” says Siddiqui. “When people attack you, you feel like the only thing you have to cling on to is your religion – like a safety blanket. It makes you go inwards. When we had all the Jack Straw stuff, women felt unsafe, they felt they would be targeted in the streets and the same will happen now.”Siddiqui says the “irresponsible” comments made by politicians will once again fuel hate crime in his area.“He [Johnson] has a hidden agenda, trying to gain support of certain types of people who have certain views on Muslims. You already feel like you’re a minority in the country and then if you wear the niqab, you are in an even smaller minority.“There are certain individuals who will use this, those individuals that do not view Muslims in a positive light already and seeing someone in a position of power making comments like this gives them the green light to take it a step further.”Fazal Hassan, the Muslim chaplain at Royal Blackburn hospital said he felt “deeply hurt” by the comments and joined calls for Johnson to resign.He said “The Muslim community feels belittled.“Britain is a democratic and free country, therefore the right to clothing is a matter of personal choice and freedom. It is absolutely unacceptable that a choice of a person’s dress is equated to that of a criminal.“Worryingly, his actions and choice of words indicate that Islamophobia is becoming mainstream in the UK and is on the rise. Furthermore, if the Conservative party fails to take any action it will signal that Islamophobia is acceptable within the Conservative party.”Meanwhile, back to a street near the shop, Saika, 28, says she has worn the veil since she was a teenager. She cannot understand the overwhelming interest in her clothing. Asked why she wears the veil, she replies bluntly: “Because I feel like it.”Six years ago when she arrived in Britain and completed the Life in the UK citizenship test she said she was told that people in the UK were free to wear whatever they wanted.“I was never forced to wear it. I like it. If I haven’t got it on I don’t feel comfortable. Nobody is telling me to do anything. I don’t go around telling other people what to wear – so why do they think they can tell me? This is my choice.” Topics Islamic veil Boris Johnson Blackburn Islam features

what was said ....top of the FBI. Brennan started this entire debacle about President Trump. We now know that Brennan had detailed knowledge of the (phony) Dossier...he knows about the Dossier, he denies knowledge of the Dossier, he briefs the Gang of 8 on the Hill about the Dossier, which....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 21, 2018 ...they then used to start an investigation about Trump. It is that simple. This guy is the genesis of this whole Debacle. This was a Political hit job, this was not an Intelligence Investigation. Brennan has disgraced himself, he’s worried about staying out of Jail.” Dan Bongino— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 21, 2018 The factsFalse. Quoting a conservative commentator who appeared on Fox and Friends on Monday morning, Mr. Trump claimed that the F.B.I. began investigating links between his presidential campaign and Russian election meddling based on a dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy. As The New York Times reported in December, the investigation began in July 2016 — after George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, told an Australian diplomat that Russia had political “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Australian officials then alerted their American counterparts. The information provided by Mr. Steele did not reach the F.B.I. officials charged with investigating Mr. Trump’s campaign until mid-September, The Times reported last week. Republicans who hold the majority vote on the House Intelligence Committee have also stated that the investigation was opened because of information linked to Mr. Papadopoulos — not Mr. Steele’s dossier. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation opened an enterprise counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign after receiving information related to Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos,” the final report from Republicans on the House committee concluded.Mr. Trump said he was “honored” by that report, which was released last month, and saw it as absolution. Additionally, a memo released in February, written by Republican staff members for the committee, stated that “the Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an F.B.I. counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by F.B.I. agent Pete Strzok.” That same memo accused investigators of abusing their powers. Mr. Trump ordered its declassification over the objections of the F.B.I.Source: Twitter, House Intelligence Committee, The New York Times

Fresh details have emerged of the coup attempt against Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with witnesses claiming foreign members of the terror group lost a two-day battle with his bodyguards before being rounded up and executed.A witness who spoke to the Guardian after being smuggled from the last hamlet in eastern Syria held by Isis, said the clash took place in al Keshma, a village next to Baghouz in September, three months earlier than regional intelligence officials believed it had taken place.“I saw him with my own eyes,” said Jumah Hamdi Hamdan, 53. “He was in Keshma and in September the Khawarij (infidels) tried to capture him.“The fighting was very intense, they had tunnels between houses. They were mainly Tunisians and there were many people killed.”Hamdan said Baghdadi then moved to Baghouz, from where he fled to the desert in early January. This account was supported by senior regional officials, who say he probably remains there, as the remnants of the so-called caliphate he built disintegrates nearby.A senior military official from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-led force battling Isis, said other members of Isis’ foreign legion had joined the fight, including Algerians and Moroccans. “It was a really tough clash and they excommunicated the losers,” said an SDF commander at the Baghouz frontline, who uses the nom de guerre Adnan Afrini. “It started in mid-September and it was a very serious attempt to kill or capture him. We don’t think he is in the town now.”Hamdan said Baghdadi and his guard force had been in the area for almost six months before fleeing. “He tried to keep a low profile and didn’t travel through town with them but we all knew where they were. He used an old red Opal car.”Isis has placed a bounty on the head of the main plotter, Abu Muath al-Jazairi, who is believed to be a veteran foreign fighter.Nemsha, along with much of Baghouz, stands in ruin as Kurdish forces and special forces from Britain, France and the US tighten the net on the last pocket the group holds – a small strip of land along the Euphrates river.Kurdish forces on the Baghouz frontline estimate the area is defended by about 400 hardcore Isis members, who do not intend to surrender. The SDF said it had captured 41 positions held by Isis.Isis leaders are believed to be holding western hostages who were captured by the organisation over the past five years and whom they intend to use as bargaining chips. British journalist John Cantlie is believed to be among them and Baghouz residents who have fled the town suggested caves on the outskirts were being used to hide him and other captives.Mortars fired by western special forces rained down on the holdouts through much of Sunday. Fighter jets soared above, leaving circular white streams that marked their orbits. The planes occasionally dropped powerful bombs that created huge plumes of smoke. Surveillance drones moved slowly beneath the jets. Aram Kochar, a Kurdish military official said Isis fighters were wary of the drones and were rarely seen on the streets, apart from at dusk or under cloud cover.“They’re very committed and they don’t plan on leaving,” the official said from the rooftop of a forward base, about 700 metres from the nearest Isis position. “We took two houses yesterday and they took them back from us at night.”On Saturday night, Kurdish forces launched the final phase of the operation to take Baghouz – a move that will allow them to lay claim to ousting Isis from all the Syrian lands it had held since capturing a swathe of the country in early 2013. During the peak of its powers, Isis had made the nearby border with Iraq redundant and controlled an area of land from eastern Aleppo to Mosul – roughly the size of Wales.As its losses pile up, the group faces a return to the ways of its forerunners, a low-level insurgency that terrorised Iraqi towns and cities, in particular. On Friday night, up to 10 Isis fighters on motorbikes attempted to storm a US military base near the al-Omar oilfield, 60km (37 miles) from the frontline. The attack was heralded earlier on Friday when a motorbike detonated on a bridge near the base.Afrini said Isis knew guerrilla warfare well and that combatting the group when its members slipped back into their communities would pose a significant challenge. “That will require an intelligence war at the local level,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy.”Groups of people, believed to be the last to leave Baghouz, sat on a grass ridge just outside the town on Sunday, where new arrivals have been processed every day over the past three weeks. Bombs thudded into the nearby town as a chill wind buffeted black-clad women and children milling slowly near military trucks that had staged for the fight.Abandoned motorbikes, tattered clothes and razors littered an approach road. Inside Baghouz, bombed-out oil tankers lay scattered among rows of shattered houses. “This might take a week or so,” said Kochar. “Maybe more.”Additional reporting: Mohammed Rasool Topics Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi Syria Middle East and North Africa news

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he is “100 percent” certain that Christine Blasey Ford named the wrong person when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault in testimony during his Supreme Court nomination hearings. “This is one of the reasons I chose him is because there is no one with a squeaky clean past like Brett Kavanaugh. He is an outstanding person and I’m very honored to have chosen him,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One while flying to a campaign rally in Kansas. “We’re very honored that he was able to withstand this horrible, horrible attack by the Democrats.” Trump’s words echoed those of Ford who told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she was “100 percent” certain it was Kavanaugh who sexually assaulted her in the upstairs bedroom of a home in a wealthy Washington suburb in 1982 when both of them were teenagers. A deeply divided U.S. Senate confirmed Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court on Saturday, as Republicans dismissed the sexual misconduct accusations and delivered a major victory to Trump. Trump watched the confirmation vote while flying on Air Force One to a political rally in Kansas, viewing the vote on large-screen television tuned to Fox News in a wood-paneled cabin. Trump flashed two thumbs up when the final vote was declared and aides on board applauded. He disputed predictions that women voters angry about Kavanaugh’s nomination could punish his party in the congressional elections on Nov. 6. Hundreds of protesters in and around the U.S. Capitol - many of whom were women - were arrested in the past week. Slideshow (2 Images)“Women were outraged at what happened to Brett Kavanaugh, outraged,” Trump said. “It was a total misnomer because the women I feel were in many ways stronger than men in his favor.” Trump said the protesters were not genuine, but had been paid by liberal political donors and that his party would prevail in November when one-third of the Senate seats and all House seats will be up for election. “I think the Republicans are going to do incredibly well,” Trump said. Reporting by Roberta Rampton, Writing by Ginger Gibson, editing by Bill Berkrot and Alistair BellOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

If you’ve spent any time debating the challenge of climate change, you’ve likely come across a common excuse for inaction. It goes something like: “[Insert rich country name] might be able to cut emissions, but that won’t solve climate change, because India is still building dozens of coal power plants.”Let’s put this excuse to bed, once and for all.First, it’s a matter of equity. Historically rich countries have pumped a much larger proportion of greenhouse gases than poor countries. The Paris climate agreement clearly takes that fact into consideration: it allows poor countries, like India, to continue to increase their emissions for many years to come, but expects rich countries to start cutting emissions right away. Without the inclusion of such allowances, few poor countries would have signed the agreement. Done right, we’d still be able to keep global average temperatures below 2°C compared to pre-industrial times.Second, it should not matter to other countries how India chooses to use up its remaining carbon budget. If India were to use natural gas, it could make that budget last longer. But India does not have much in terms of oil and gas reserves. It does have a lot of coal. And it’s choosing the most cost-effective way to provide energy to its citizens—many tens of millions of whom still lack access to electricity. (The cost of solar and wind power in India have fallen drastically. But without a cheap way to store the energy from variable renewables, they are not a like-for-like replacement for fossil fuels yet.)Those reasons explain why, when measuring the climate change performance of the world’s top 60 emitters in terms of emissions, renewables deployment, energy use, and climate policies, and other indicators India is ranked 11, in the esteemed company of other green countries like Norway, Denmark, and the UK.Additionally, the fact that India and other poor countries are building coal power plants does not mean coal has a longterm future. A recent analysis found that the coal power plants under construction across the world would add about 236 GW of power capacity in the next few years. But the retirement of coal power plants in the US, Europe, and India would mean losing 234 GW of power capacity.Mining companies like BHP are looking to divest from thermal coal that’s burned in power plants. Insurance companies like Chubb are no longer supporting coal assets. Billionaires like Mike Bloomberg are spending vast sums to support the closure of coal power plants in rich countries. Development banks like EBRD and ADB, often used as a route for financing infrastructure projects in poor countries, are ending their support for coal. The dirtiest fossil fuel is finally on an irreversible decline.There are many good reasons to get rid of coal: carbon emissions, particulate pollution, mining effluents, etc. The world should do all it can to cut its coal addiction. But let’s not forget that coal still provides more than 25% of global energy consumption in a world where nearly a billion people still don’t have access to basic necessities like electricity. It’s the dual challenge that the world doesn’t yet have a simple way to solve.“We’re very concerned about the environment, but if you ask me to put it in the order of priorities, I would say having sufficient power for development comes first,” RK Singh, India’s power minister, said at a conference in February. Singh is well aware that India is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, but he also recognizes the importance of increasing energy access to uplift the country’s poor.India is handling its climate commitments as it best can. That’s no excuse for any other country to not do its bit in this global fight.

The US president, Donald Trump, told former FBI director James Comey he had serious concerns about the judgment of his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, according to memos maintained by Comey.The 15 pages of documents contain new details about a series of interactions between Comey and Trump in the weeks before Comey’s May 2017 firing. In one of those encounters, a private Oval Office discussion, the former FBI head has claimed the president asked him to end an investigation into Flynn.According to one memo, Trump complained about Flynn at a private January 2017 dinner with Comey, saying “the guy has serious judgment issues”. He then blamed Flynn for a delay in returning the congratulatory call of an international leader, telling Comey he would be upset if he had to wait six days for a returned phone call.“I did not comment at any point during this topic and there was no mention or acknowledgment of any FBI interest in or contact with General Flynn,” Comey wrote.At that point, the FBI had already interviewed Flynn about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and the Justice Department had already warned White House officials that they were concerned Flynn was vulnerable to blackmail.Trump on Friday defended Flynn.Flynn was fired on 13 February, 2017, after White House officials said he had misled them about his Russian contacts during the transition period. In a separate memo, Comey says Trump cleared the Oval Office of other officials, encouraged him to let the investigation into Flynn go and called him a good guy.The memos also reveal that days before Flynn’s firing, Trump’s then chief of staff, Reince Priebus, asked Comey if Flynn’s communications were being monitored under a secret surveillance warrant.“Do you have a Fisa order on Mike Flynn?” Priebus asked Comey, according to the memos, referring to an order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.Comey said he “paused for a few seconds and then said that I would answer here, but that this illustrated the kind of question that had been asked and answered through established channels”. Comey’s response is redacted on the unclassified memos.Comey has said publicly: “I knew there might come a day when I would need a record of what had happened, not just to defend myself, but to defend the FBI and our integrity as an institution and the independence of our investigative function.”The memos were provided to Congress earlier on Thursday as House Republicans escalated criticism of the Justice Department, threatening to subpoena the documents and questioning officials.Comey is on a publicity tour to promote his new book, A Higher Loyalty. He revealed last year that he had written the memos after conversations with Trump.In a letter sent to three Republican House committee chairmen on Thursday evening, the assistant attorney general, Stephen Boyd, wrote that the department “consulted the relevant parties” and concluded that releasing the memos would not adversely affect any ongoing investigations. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign as well as possible obstruction of justice by the president.Boyd said the decision to allow the release of the memos “does not alter the department’s traditional obligation to protect from public disclosure witness statements and other documents obtained during an ongoing investigation.”Comey said in an interview Thursday with CNN that he’s “fine” with the Justice Department turning his memos over to Congress.“I think what folks will see if they get to see the memos is I’ve been consistent since the very beginning, right after my encounters with President Trump, and I’m consistent in the book and tried to be transparent in the book as well,” he said.Last week, the GOP chairmen of three House committees demanded the memos by Monday. The Justice Department asked for more time, and the lawmakers agreed. Topics Donald Trump James Comey Michael Flynn US politics news